Very Little Theatre delivers 'Frost/Nixon' to a modern stage

By Dana Alston The Register-Guard

Thursday

Aug 9, 2018 at 5:00 AM

The stage at Very Little Theatre currently looks like an unfinished set. It’s occupied by a small raised platform and a wide projector screen hanging in the background. The behind-the-curtain workings, with ladders, big and small, stretching up into the air, appear to have been laid bare.

On the surface, the presentation looks a long way off from a planned production of VLT's “Frost/Nixon” that debuts this weekend. Director Darryl Marzyck — who calls the story “the stuff of Greek tragedies” — insists that every set design choice was deliberate.

“In Greek tragedies, a person reaches a height, usually a king,” Marzyck said, pointing to the ladders. “And they find ways to destroy themselves. People think they can be godlike, and they always end up falling.”

That was certainly true of Richard Nixon, who took part in a televised interview series with British journalist David Frost in 1977, three years after his presidential resignation. British playwright Peter Morgan dramatized the background and key moments in the interviews with “Frost/Nixon,” including Nixon’s first admission of guilt regarding the Watergate scandal. The interview series sank any political ambitions he had left and made Frost's career.

Marzyck says the play is about hubris and the depths of political ambition that feels timely in the current political climate. VLT planned the production over a year ago, when the Trump administration and its controversies were already well-established.

“Someone recently said that Trump is the millennial Nixon,” Marzyck said. “We are going through this thing again, only worse.”

Even so, it is difficult not to be shocked by some of the play’s moments, many of which were directly transcribed. In one tense confrontation, Frost (played by Damon Noyes) presses Nixon (Mike Hawkins) on the legality of the president’s actions. Nixon’s response: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” The modern parallels — including tweets from Trump deflecting accusations of illegal conduct — are eerie.

But “Frost/Nixon” is only partially concerned with politics. Between the interviews, the two men form an uncomfortable, close bond, like two warriors locked into combat. Their relationship in front of the cameras forms one of the play’s central themes.

“For me, this is a story not only about television and politics, but also about the money of television, and a relationship formed between two starkly different men,” said Hawkins, who will portray Nixon. “In some way, they actually helped each other out through the circumstances of the interview.”